Bettin
'''Bettin '''is an animal worker in the west settlements. Biography As a Forest girl, presumably her family was very poor. Bettin eventually took up a job as an animal worker caring for the king's sheep. She most likely sent the money she earned back home to help her family. The Goose Girl One rainy evening, Enna calls Bettin over to hear the story that the new goose girl Isi is about to tell. Blushing at the sudden attention, Isi begins her story, attracting more and more listeners as she goes on until the whole hall is paying rapt attention. When she reaches the end of her tale, Bettin and all the other animal workers request that tomorrow, and every night, she tell them a story. She joins Enna, Razo, Conrad, and Isi for the Wintermoon festival. The city is richly decorated for the festivities, filled with colorful paper flowers and suns, street magicians, and acrobats. The group eventually finds themselves in the Thumbprint of the Gods, a square where the javelin dancers are trying to earn their javelins and shields. Bettin soon spots a group of nobles daintily picking their way through the crowd and mentions that the prince should be among them. Both she and Isi are eager to see his royal highness and lead their friends to follow them until they stop at a game booth where a young boy no more than thirteen happily throws miniature spears at a wooden boar. Razo identifies the little boy as the prince, much to Isi's surprise. They watch the game for a while, but soon they wander once more throughout the festival. Soon after Wintermoon, a light snowfall gloomily reminds the workers about their struggling families in the Forest. Isi is asked what her family sells, and she replies that she doesn't know what they're doing now. Suddenly, Conrad laughs roughly at her, scorning her answer. Conrad continues to mock her until he has the attention of every worker in the hall. He ridicules them all for admiring her skill with birds when she's not even from Bayern. He declares triumphantly that he's seen her hair and knows that she's a blonde "yellow girl", the one the Kildenrean guards are looking for. The tense silence is split when Enna yells at him to shut up, but he counters that she doesn't know what he does; he's seen her. Enna snaps that she has too and so he should shove his jealousies where the sun doesn't shine. His face as red as a sunburn, Conrad slams his fist on the table in frustration. Beier and Razo gently but firmly hold his arms as he challenges Enna to make Isi remove her headscarf and prove that she's Bayern. Enna sadly explains to the hall that Isi's hair got burned off in a fire before she came to the city, and she's not going to embarrass her just to set Conrad straight. The workers study their potatoes with sudden interest, but Conrad is furious. He swears to prove that Isi's foreign, but no one responds. Angry that no one believes him, he squirms out of Beier and Razo's grip and stomps off in a huff. Two months after Wintermoon, the goose flock is attacked by thieves. Isi somehow manages to drive them away all on her own, but she refuses to talk about it, leaving her would-be rescuers to tell the much-embellished tale to Bettin and the rest of the workers. Some workers are sent to the goose pasture to collect the poles and sacks the thieves left behind, but they instead return with the palace pageboy Tatto. The young page grandly announces that the king has heard of the valiant protection of his geese and wishes to thank those involved, and Bettin presumably cheers along with everyone else as Isi and Conrad follow Tatto out the door. Later that evening, Tatto returns to dine with the workers and gossips about the rumors of war plaguing the palace. Tatto reveals that the princess sent from Kildenree to marry the Bayern prince told the king that she really was sent as a kind of decoy to pretend all is well. In reality, Kildenree is plotting an attack on Bayern. However, the princess has grown to like Bayern and does not wish to be a part of her country's deceitful ways. Tatto declares that the king is outraged and has decided to crush Kildenree in a preemptive strike as soon as the mountain passes are cleared of snow. Bettin sings a war song along with most of the hall, excited at the idea of a war. Perhaps if the war is big enough, it will require the services of the Forest Folk and maybe that will earn them the respect that the city's prejudice has denied them. That night, Bettin and half the settlement hear a racket of angry geese and spot Isi running for her life from a large man named Ungolad chasing her. Enna leads a large segment of the workers after them, but they lose sight of the two in the nearby woods. Faced with everyone's questions, Enna reveals to them all that Isi is truly Princess Anidori-Kiladra of Kildenree. She was sent to Bayern to marry their prince, but on the journey half of her escort mutinied. They killed the other half and tried to kill Isi too so that they could replace her with her lady-in-waiting, Selia, but Isi managed to escape and has been hiding as their goose girl ever since. Bettin is shocked to hear of Isi's true identity and worries that she may have been killed. Soon after, the prince's upcoming wedding to the Kildenrean princess is announced and the whole city has a week-long holiday. Freed from work but having nowhere to go, Bettin joins the rest of the workers in the dining hall. Suddenly, Isi herself walks in the door, accompanied by Finn and a Kildenrean man loyal to Isi named Talone. As soon as the room catches sight of Isi, everyone rushes to hug her and congratulate her on being alive. Bettin and the other workers are determined to help their friend on her quest and volunteer to join her before she even has a chance to ask them. Leading her group to the palace, Isi gains an audience with the previous prime minister Odaccar, who is now retired. He writes a very official note for the stable-master so they can get horses for their journey. They manage to acquire about a dozen horses, but not many animal-workers can ride. Those who can, possibly including Bettin, are chosen to accompany Isi all the way to Lake Meginhard, where the wedding is to take place. After a few days' journey they arrive at the manor, but are stopped by the king's guards. They insist that the princess see the king alone, forcing Isi's escort to remain outside. Nevertheless, they eventually gain access to the manor just as Selia and Ungolad's treachery is revealed to the King of Bayern. Ungolad attempts to kill Isi, but Talone bursts in the nick of time, distracting Ungolad by challenging him to a duel. Talone fights the vicious, maddened Ungolad as the workers rush into the room to help the king's guard fight the Kildenrean traitors. As the Kildenreans lose their lives one by one, soon the only fight left is the one between Ungolad and Prince Geric. Knowing that if anyone tries to help the prince win his very first real battle it would be a great dishonor, the Bayern soldiers and animal-workers watch helplessly from the sidelines as their prince struggles against the vicious, maddened Ungolad. Ungolad manages to stab Geric in the side, but the pain seems to give Geric strength until he manages to give Ungolad a deathblow, ending the battle between the traitors and the Bayern as a whole. The king symbolically declares Geric a man and decides to charge Selia with treason, making everyone notice that Selia is, in fact, nowhere in sight. As they look around the ghastly, body-strewn room, everyone suddenly realizes that Conrad, too, is nowhere to be found. Bettin and the others grimly look through the bodies of the dead for their friend when they hear screaming coming from the hidden passageway. They look inside to see a proud Conrad dragging a furious Selia along by her hair, having caught her just as she was trying to escape through a window. The king's soldiers swiftly carry her away screaming to the dungeons to await her punishment for treason: to be dragged through the streets in a barrel full of nails, a punishment she herself devised for Isi. The next day, Bettin is summoned to the dining hall where she takes her place among the newly formed hundred-band made up of the Forest folk. Some days after the celebration, Bettin attends the marriage between Isi and Geric in the Thumbprint of the Gods, a public city square where anyone, noble or commoner, can attend the wedding. Category:Bayern Category:Females Category:People Category:Goose Girl Characters